Not even close.
“Yeah,” he said instead.
He tried to stand up again, this time taking it slower. Much, much slower. He managed to remain upright even though his legs threatened to buckle. There was some pain coming from his chest that he hadn’t noticed before but was now impossible to ignore. The volts of electricity from the TASER they’d shot him with back in the cage room.
Flashes of Gruff and Not-So-Gruff’s conversations replayed in his head. Not the words themselves, but the joy in their voices. The two sonsofbitches were having fun at his expense. A lot of fun.
Just wait until I get my hands on you two bastards.
He would have stretched if every part of him wasn’t in pain. He wasn’t sure when that happened or how. Maybe when he was fighting the ghoul. Or later when he “won” and fell on his face as a reward. However it happened, his muscles were sore and moving his legs was painful. At least his skull wasn’t pounding anymore, so there was that.
Smith walked to the nearest wall and felt along the rough and cold concrete. There was nothing aesthetically pleasing about the room’s construction. It was cement poured into place and allowed to cure. But it did its job, whatever that was, initially.
Right now, it was a prison.
It might not have the bars of the cells back at the Gaffney police station, but they’d tossed him and Mary and the others into a prison cell just the same. Smith couldn’t see a door, but it had to be there somewhere. Probably in the parts of the darkness that he hadn’t reached yet.
Smith felt his way along the wall while Mary stood up and followed him closely behind. “What are you looking for, John?”
“A door.”
“It’s back there, across the room, but it’s locked.”
Smith walked to the far end of the room. There was a deceptive lot of ground to cover. The prison was bigger than a police station cell, and he counted ten feet before he finally reached the other wall. The room itself had to be over twenty feet long and about ten feet wide.
The entrance/exit was where Mary said it was, but grabbing the lever and trying to turn it yielded nothing. Even if he wasn’t slightly weak after being shot, then struck in the back of the head, then TASERed, he wouldn’t have been able to muscle the door open anyway.
Not that Smith allowed that fact to stop him from trying. He didn’t quit until beads of sweat had broken across his temples.
“I’ve tried it; it won’t budge,” Mary said from behind him.
Smith nodded and turned around. She stood in front of him, not quite looking defeated but not too far off.
“Mary,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Where’s Aaron?”
“In Gaffney somewhere. They took him away from me, John. The bastards took Aaron away from me. They said I wouldn’t get to see him again until I’d been reeducated and ready to assimilate back into society.”
“And they didn’t say how this ‘reeducation’ works?”
Mary shook her head. “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest, shivering noticeably for the first time. “But I have a feeling I’ll learn all about it pretty soon. They didn’t bring me here just to sit around.” She glanced back at the four women in the room with them before turning back to Smith. “What are we going to do, John? How are we going to get out of here?”
I have no idea, Smith thought, but he didn’t think that was the answer Mary was hoping to hear.
“I’ll figure something out,” he said instead.
Fifteen
I’ll figure something out, he had said to Mary.
How, was the question.
Or an even better question was, where did he begin?
He was locked away inside an underground prison, as far as he could tell, with no way out. The only path was sealed tight from the other side, and he didn’t have anything even resembling a weapon to work with. There was nothing inside the big room except the clothes they were wearing. Hell, they’d even taken his boots for whatever reason, something he hadn’t noticed until now. (Though they’d left his socks, which he guessed he should be grateful for, if nothing else.)
Smith was up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Worse, he couldn’t even see the creek and didn’t know how long it stretched, or how wide. He was being pushed around blind, and all he could do was adapt to the situation as problems arose.
So he sat with Mary and the others, plotting his next move. Which was…not much. He had to get out of here, that much was clear. He couldn’t allow them to subject Mary to their “reeducation.” Smith had a feeling that involved the cage in the other room, along with the ghoul, which was no doubt still alive.
Over my dead body.
Then: Famous last words.
Yeah, he probably shouldn’t have had that thought. It wasn’t like he could stop Gruff and Not-So-Gruff (or whatever their real names were) when they came to get Mary. He was unarmed and still wobbly on his feet, and he wasn’t entirely sure he could take on either one of their captors mano-a-mano. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he could take on any of the women in the room! One of Smith’s problems was that he’d always been so good with a gun—scarily good, according to his mentor—that he hadn’t developed any real hand-to-hand fighting skills. Sure, he’d had the same combat training during Black Tide’s Basic Training like everyone else, but he’d never really absorbed what he’d been told. He didn’t have to because of his proficiency with a firearm.
Now, thinking about all those classes and lessons, he wished he’d paid closer attention.
Another thing you shoulda done better.
One of many, as it turned out.
So he didn’t have very much to do but sit and wait with Mary and the others. Or just Mary, because as far as Smith could tell, the other four women were sound asleep. He didn’t blame them; from his internal calculations, it had to be almost morning now, or damn near close to it. If he’d had a window, he could have confirmed that theory. Heck, if he had a window, he could have tried to crawl out.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t…
Mary, like him, couldn’t sleep. The other women had no such trouble, and Smith could hear them snoring away. Even the sisters, whose names Mary didn’t know—because they were either too shy or suspicious to talk to her when she arrived—were huddled in their own corner. The young one, who had been here the longest, hadn’t moved from her spot. The one that had been lying on her side had turned over onto her back, and Smith could see long red hair and a pale complexion. None of the women looked as if they’d been physically tormented, but Smith knew from experience that assaults didn’t always produce visible scars.
“How did you end up here?” Mary finally asked after a while.
He told her about going back to Gaffney, rescuing Blake, then coming here.
“What happened to her?” Mary asked.
“She didn’t make it.”
“Oh.”
Yeah, Smith thought.
He didn’t say any more about Blake, and thankfully, neither did Mary.
Aaron’s mother said instead, “Maybe we should try to get some sleep.”
“You should.”
“You’re not sleepy?”
“No.”
“Neither am I.”
“You haven’t slept all night.”
“I know, but…” She paused for a moment, before continuing. “I’m scared of what will happen when I go to sleep.”
“What do you mean? What would happen?”
“They might come to get me.”
This time, it was Smith’s turn to say, “Oh.”
Like Mary’s “Oh,” that was all he needed to say. That simple, single word expressed everything he needed it to.
Smith said, “We’ll get out of here.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but we will.”
“You sound so sure…”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“I just am.”
“But
why?”
Because I don’t have any choice, Smith thought.
But he said, “I’ve been in worse situations.”
“You have?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Atlanta.”
Mary was obviously waiting for him to continue, and when he didn’t, she said, “What happened in Atlanta?”
Smith shook his head. He didn’t want to think about Atlanta. It was a bad situation from the start, and it only got worse as the week dragged on. But he’d survived it, against all odds, and he was sure he’d survive this, too.
He hoped, anyway.
“You know why smart people stay away from the cities?” Smith asked.
“Ghouls,” Mary said.
“That’s only one reason.”
“What are the others?”
Smith thought about how much to tell her. The things he saw, and did…
“There’s a reason people stay away from the cities,” he said, and left it at that.
Mary did, too, thankfully.
She said instead, “I miss Aaron. It’s only been a day—not even that—but I miss him so much already.”
Smith nodded, not that he knew what she was really feeling. He didn’t have a son or a daughter out there; or, at least, none that he knew of. He understood loss, of course, but it was probably not even close to the kind Mary was suffering right now.
Neither one of them said anything after that, and soon they both gave in to the silence and darkness. Smith lay down on the cold and unyielding concrete floor and closed his eyes. He tried to sleep, but it didn’t happen. It was easier for Mary, who began snoring softly next to him. She’d laid down not more than a few inches away. He envied her ability to go to sleep despite all that she’d gone through in the last twenty-four hours. Then again, it wasn’t like he’d had a barrel of laughs—
The click, followed by the clank, of a piece of metal moving, from all the way across the room (The door lever!) snapped him wide awake.
Smith was on his feet before he knew what he was doing, and jogging silently—or as silently as he could muster—across the room. He must have done a pretty good job, because neither Mary nor the other women were woken up by his sudden movements.
He slid up against the equally cold wall next to the door and waited.
Even in the semidarkness, he could see the lever moving. It helped that his eyes had adjusted to the pitch blackness and that the lever, along with the rest of the door, was a slightly different shade of gray than the scarred walls that surrounded him.
Another clank, as whoever was on the other side moved the lever another notch, undoing another locking mechanism. Smith watched silently, mentally and physically preparing for what was coming.
He was reasonably certain he could take on one man, especially with the element of surprise on his side. And maybe even two. He wasn’t 100 percent certain about two, but he thought he could.
Maybe.
Of course, if there was more than two…
Then you’re fucked.
But so what? You’re fucked either way if you stay in here.
The door creaked slightly as it opened. Not loud enough to wake Mary or the other women, but plenty loud for Smith, who was waiting next to it. A patch of artificial light flooded into the room as the door opened wider, allowing two shadows to fall through the opening.
Two men.
Of course two men, because one would have been way too easy for him.
Fuck my luck.
Their shadows were elongated because the source of light was behind them. A hallway, maybe even made of the same concrete material as the room he was in. Was he locked away in some sort of underground bunker? That was possible. The American Midwest was littered with them, built by preppers that thought the end of the world was coming. Or maybe hoping for the end of the world. They had the right idea, as it turned out.
Fortunately, the door opened onto the left side, so it didn’t careen into Smith, where he stood waiting. It also gave him a perfect view of the man that stepped inside first.
Sneakers, faded jeans, holding what looked like a black metal police riot baton that wasn’t fully extended. A belt, but no gun or a holster. Plaid long-sleeve work shirt, the sleeves partially speckled with dirt.
“Which one?” a voice said. It was a familiar voice, too.
Gruff. One of the two that had been taking bets on how long Smith could withstand the ghoul earlier.
“The new one,” a second voice answered. “It’s her turn.” Not-So-Gruff. Gruff’s partner-in-crime.
Smith wasn’t sure if he was happy to hear their voices so he could finally get his crack at them, or if he should have been concerned. They were obviously old hands at this and probably knew what to expect. Or they thought they did, anyway. Smith hoped that previously dealing with only vulnerable women would leave them open and maybe just a little too confident.
That was his hope, anyway, as a man with sandy blond hair stepped casually through the door like he owned the place. The guy had the baton gripped tightly—menacingly—in his right hand. He led with his left foot, followed by his right.
“Wakey, wakey, ladies,” the man said, almost in a singsong pattern that convinced Smith he was used to having his way.
Either he and his partner had forgotten all about Smith, or they didn’t think he was going to be any trouble. But then, there were two of them and just one of him. Assholes, in Smith’s experience, were always overly confident when they had numbers on their side.
That was their mistake. That was always all of these assholes’ mistakes.
Smith tackled the man before he could completely enter the room, and the two of them went flying, with Smith driving the man through the air with everything he had. His socked feet moved with speed and force against the floor while his hands wrapped tightly around his target’s waist. The man’s breath struck Smith in the face, but better bad breath than the baton the guy was holding.
“What the fuck?” a voice shouted from somewhere behind him—Not-So-Gruff, which meant the one with sandy blond hair was Gruff—but Smith was too busy slamming Gruff into the floor, using his weight to piledrive the man into the hard concrete in one of those wrestling moves he’d seen on TV.
Smith heard an audible grunt, but that was lost in the very loud—and incredibly satisfying—crunch of the man’s skull slamming into the floor. The body underneath him instantly relaxed, the right hand with the baton collapsing and staying down. Smith reached for the black object, wrestling it easily out of the weak fingers, and quickly scrambled to his feet.
He fully expected to fall right back down. After all, it wasn’t like he was 100 percent. He wasn’t even close to 100 percent. 50 percent tops, and that was being overly generous. So when he made it to his feet and stayed upright, he was probably more shocked than anyone. Maybe he wasn’t quite as injured as he had thought? Or maybe adrenaline was pushing him to stay on his feet, because falling back down now was not good for his health.
He was whirling around when the second figure—Not-So-Gruff—stepped through the open door. Like Gruff, this one was armed with an identical baton, but he had a holster on his right hip, with a gun in it. The man’s eyes widened—it was easy for Smith to see with the lights flooding all over Not-So-Gruff’s face—as he stumbled through the opening, before backpedaling at the sight of Smith.
Smith was almost on his feet when Not-So-Gruff dropped the baton and reached for his holstered piece.
Shit! Smith thought as he made his move.
But he was too far—at least five feet—and the guy was increasing that by backing up further. He was halfway to his target when Not-So-Gruff—he was about the same age as his partner—early thirties, with shaggy black hair—reached for, found, and drew his gun.
No, not a gun. A TASER. Maybe it was even the same one that had been used on Smith earlier. Smith knew that because of the weapon’s shape. It could be easily mistaken for a gun by an untrained eye,
but Smith didn’t have untrained eyes.
Still, he wasn’t going to reach the man in time, and he mentally prepared to do a last-second pirouette to avoid getting tased a second time. He wasn’t sure how he was going to accomplish that, though. Maybe pull off something like in that movie about that guy who was caught in a computer program, then discovered he was “the one,” and—
“Hey, dickhead!”
The sound came from the rest of the room, and Smith, caught by surprise, turned to look. He wasn’t the only one, thank God, because Not-So-Gruff did, too.
Mary, running toward their captor, shouting, “You motherfucker!”
Smith knew exactly what she was doing: Drawing Not-So-Gruff’s attention away from him.
And he took full advantage of it, running toward his target even as Not-So-Gruff’s eyes snapped back in his direction.
Three feet—
Snap! as the rest of the riot baton came out of its housing with a flick of Smith’s wrist.
Two—
Not-So-Gruff raised the TASER to fire.
One!
Smith brought the baton down on the man’s extended hand and heard the crack! of bone breaking. The TASER fell, but even before it had the chance to hit the floor, Smith struck its former owner in the side of the head with the blunt metal object and was rewarded with another solid and oh-so-satisfying crack! echo.
The body collapsed in a pile, twitched for a while, and stayed down.
Smith snatched the TASER off the floor and turned to make sure Gruff had remained down on the other side of the open door. The man hadn’t moved from the spot where Smith had left him.
Smith crouched and checked Not-So-Gruff’s pulse. It was present, but weak. The man’s eyes, blinking rapidly up at Smith, was evidence he wasn’t a threat anymore. If he had a gun and a suppressor, Smith would have put the man out of his misery just to be sure. But he didn’t, so he didn’t.
Instead, Smith hurried back to Gruff and did the same. The guy was flatlined. Good. It saved Smith the energy of killing him. Smith took the opportunity to catch his breath. With the door open and the bright hallway outside visible, suddenly the air was less stale.
Mary was standing next to Not-So-Gruff, looking down at him. Smith walked back over and picked up the man’s fallen baton and handed it to her, before searching its owner for more weapons. He didn’t find anything that he could use. Smith turned the man over onto his back. He was still alive but not a threat. Smith didn’t think the man could even stand up. Blood dripped from the side of his head, and he probably had brain damage given how hard Smith had swung.
After The Purge, AKA John Smith (Book 3): Shoot Last Page 10